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Disclaimer: I do not own The Pretender or House, MD. They are owned by NBC, TNT, Steve & Craig, FOX, and David Shore. No infringement is intended and no profit is being made.
Crossover: The Pretender/House MD
Timeline: Post-Island of the Haunted // post-"Joy to the World"
Spoilers: Nothing specific for either if you know the general plots of where this is in the timelines.
Character(s): Broots
Pairing(s): Broots/Lisa Cuddy
Author's Note: Very late gift!fic for Catherine. She prompted me with Broots/Cuddy, and this is what I came up with.
Summary: Looking back, he figures it was all inevitable anyway. The Centre had to fall some day. Life still goes on. (Mercifully.)
Waiting on Someday to Fall
by: chopsticks
pg
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by: chopsticks
pg
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Looking back, he figures it was all inevitable anyway. The Centre had to fall some day.
Life still goes on. (Mercifully.)
-----
The government shuttles him out of Blue Cove and finds him a simple (by his standards) IT position at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. They help him find a small house and moves his things there, though never missing an opportunity to remind him of the privacy agreements he signed.
At least I get to keep my name, he thinks, though going by his first name takes some getting used to.
The job is nowhere near as fulfilling as tracking down a genius, but he figures it's better for his health. Besides, he's not as young as he once was, and he doesn't really miss being surrounded by armed men and women in impeccable black suits, or his coworkers mysteriously disappearing.
Plus, he's stopped having the nightmares about Mr. Lyle extracting his liver, cooking it on a hot plate, and eating it in front of him. He considers that to be the best part of his new job.
-----
Debbie's in college now, and he's pretty sure he doesn't want to know what she's up to with her friends (or, even worse, boyfriends). She calls to check up on him, and they never speak of the Centre or their dead friends. Casualties of the Centre, he thinks, but sometimes, late at night, he's disgusted by his own callousness.
He shouldn't be surprised, really, that it takes at least one strong drink to let him sleep at night. His own mind is not someplace he likes to be anymore, not after everything he's lived through.
(Clones and kidnapped children and the piles of dead bodies and the families that were ripped apart and all those lives destroyed with some quick taps of his fingers on the keys--the clicks tantamount to gunshots in his own mind now.)
The smell of cigarette smoke makes him nauseous, someone telling a bad pun makes the bottom drop out of his stomach, and the sight of a Pez dispenser makes him want to grab the nearest liquor bottle. He thinks of his dead friends, thinks of the strength they showed in the end, and finds his own inner strength (the strength they taught him he had) behind his closed eyelids. He goes on with his life; learns to let the past be the past.
Though, it's really hard to forget.
-----
The first time he meets her is as a courtesy after his courtesy interview. She smiles warmly but is clearly harried, stacks of papers on her desk and a large cup of take-out coffee sitting precariously on the edge. Her handshake is warm and firm, her face open and welcoming, but he's pretty sure he can see annoyance at having to take the time for this lurking behind her eyes.
It's not on his resume, but his last job taught him how to read people in a single glance.
He's as socially awkward as ever, but she doesn't seem to mind and smiles at his stutters. He berates himself internally, because he has faced far more beautiful, fearsome women than this one, and yet he still finds himself tongue-tied in her presence, words coming out in the wrong order, syllables getting trapped in his mouth.
He thinks it's ridiculous how he has lived through so much more than the average person can ever dream, but his heart rate still increases exponentially when he has to have a polite conversation.
He's always been good at comforting himself with the knowledge that first impressions don't last forever.
-----
He wakes up. He showers. He eats breakfast. He drives to work. He does his job for exactly eight hours. He drives home. He eats dinner. He watches television. He has a large scotch. He falls asleep. His days have become cyclical in shape.
Sometimes, over the tumbler full of scotch (her favorite brand--a fitting tribute), he thinks about prophecies and parent's lies to their children and free choice and inevitability. He thinks about purpose and the fact that he is still alive. He makes the easy assumption that there must still be a purpose left for him, but in his haze of routine he can't work out what it could possibly be.
He was never the right kind of genius for these questions, but even that genius didn't figure it out until it was too late.
He always drains the tumbler at that point, and thinks his life was easier to understand with a psychologist for a friend.
-----
He has a coworker who tells him that her best days start out with new underwear.
He thinks his laughter is a little on the hysterical side, but nobody notices except for him.
-----
The second time he meets her is when her entire system crashes and her entire body is practically vibrating with anger.
"Mr. Broots!" she snaps angrily, her voice slicing through the air and reminding him of times gone by. He has to bite back his laughter, has to repress the giggles that bubble up from within him--the kind that only appear when he wants to cry but can't allow himself to.
Her sharp voice wakes her baby, and the screaming child is clearly only feeding her own anger. She tries to comfort the little girl and to calm herself down at the same time, but it's painfully obvious that her attempts at both are failing.
He eventually stands up from underneath her desk and picks his way over to her, careful not to step on any of the computer parts he's ripped out. He holds out his arms, attention focused on the baby that's searching for some comfort.
"Let me try." His voice doesn't shake, doesn't stutter if he doesn't think about who he's talking to, who she reminds him of. Her eyes narrow and he's forced to look at her, to reassure her. "I-I'm good with children," he explains stupidly.
After a few moments of hesitation she hands the child over gently, chiding him to be careful. He is, of course, and the little girl continues to cry until he begins singing a little tune he learned over twenty years ago, one that always got Debbie to quiet down after her mother had screamed at him once again.
He pretends not to notice her eyes on him.
-----
Debbie calls him that night, and they spend much of the call reminiscing about her childhood. Or, at least, he reminisces about what she was like as a baby, and she listens. She tells him she aced her finals and asks if she can come visit. ("Only to do your laundry," he teases.)
He skips the scotch, thinking of the little girl and her overworked mother, and he wonders about the path Debbie's life will take. He thinks of how lucky he is that they're both still alive, that they still have each other, that they were strong enough not to allow themselves to be torn apart like so many others.
He falls asleep feeling hopeful and happy for the first time in a long time.
-----
He comes across her at his favorite sub shop while on his lunch, and she doesn't seem quite as surprised to see him as he is to see her. She confesses that the shop's oven-toasted subs are one of her guilty indulgences and invites him to have lunch with her. Usually he goes to the park across the street and watches the life moving past him, but he ducks his head awkwardly and accepts her invitation. He feels his heart rate pick up, feels the sweat forming on his hands, feels like his limbs have become one size too big, but he makes it through lunch with only a minor incident involving a pepper shaker that left them both laughing.
They walk back to the hospital together, and he feels more at ease with her. He shares a few (unclassified) stories with her about his former job, and she shares some of the more amusing tales of capers the doctors in the hospital have tried to pull on her watch.
Before they go their separate ways, he swallows audibly and asks if she would like to have dinner with him.
"I'd really like that," she replies, a large smile on her face and, he notices, relief hiding in her eyes. She gives him her number while she plays with her necklace, and they make plans for later in the week. As he's walking to the elevators he's pretty sure she's watching him.
He's also pretty sure he walks around with the dopiest grin on his face all day.
-----
His life, he thinks, has taken a bizarre turn for the normal. He's not sure how to react to it all. He and Lisa Cuddy are actually dating, and he's about as surprised as anyone else is by that turn of events. He keeps expecting Mr. White or Mr. Cox or Mr. Lyle or Brigitte or someone to show up at his doorstep, or for his phone to ring and Miss Parker be on the other end, berating him to "bring his scrawny ass in" and he'll discover that all of this has been nothing more than a fanciful dream.
Still, he hasn't woken up yet, so he figures he might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
Summer school starts and Debbie prepares to leave, but not before she insists on meeting Lisa. The two hit it off famously, of course, and he doesn't know why he was ever nervous it would be any other way.
"She's good for you, Daddy," she whispers in his ear as she hugs him goodbye, then she flies out the door, promising to call and visit when she has a chance. He can't help but feel that one part of his life is ending as he watches her car drive away into the horizon.
-----
They lay together in bed, legs tangled and her curled up against him. Rachel is sleeping peacefully in her room, the gentle sound of her breathing through the baby monitor lulling him into a light doze.
He thinks about how she's asked him about his past, about his former job, about the sadness that seems to shroud him when he makes reference to it. He thinks about telling her everything, about how many federal laws he'd be breaking, about how little things like laws have never stopped him before.
"Hey, are you still awake?"
"Barely," is the mumbled response, and he presses a kiss into her hair.
"I want to tell you something," he whispers, and begins to talk. Only the basics, because he's not ready to tell her everything yet, but for right now it's enough.
She holds him close when his voice shakes with barely-contained emotion, and when he's through telling her about the people he loved
(Her name was Miss Parker, and she was a real bitch if you didn't know her, but one of the most good-hearted people I've ever known;
(His name was Sydney, and he was always there for you whether you knew you needed him or not;
(His name was Jarod, and he saved me in more ways than one.)
he feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders, like maybe the past can finally become the past.
He falls asleep thinking that maybe, just maybe, he can start to live his life again.
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the end.
the end.
